§4019. Private scholarships

A. Recognizing the success of the program and in order to maintain the long-term financial stability of the program, private businesses, industry, foundations, charities, and other groups may ask the division of administration for, notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, authority to create privately funded scholarship programs to make payments to participating schools on behalf of individual students. If the division of administration authorizes such a private scholarship program, private scholarship funds received by a participating school from such private scholarship program on behalf of a student shall cause a reduction in the dollar amount of the program scholarship to the participating school attributable to that student such that the program scholarship associated with that student shall be an amount that is equal to the dollar amount that the program scholarship would have been if no such private scholarship funds had been received less the amount of private scholarship funds received by the participating school on behalf of that student.

B. This Section shall in no way be interpreted in such a manner that a student could receive less benefits from a combination of the program scholarship and the private scholarship funded on his behalf than he would have received solely from the program scholarship if there had been no such private scholarship funded on his behalf. Therefore, to the extent any such privately funded scholarship funds provided for in this Section made to a participating school on behalf of a qualified student are for an amount less than the amount a given student would have otherwise received as a program scholarship if no such private scholarship funds had been paid under this Section, then the participating school shall receive that difference on behalf of the student as the student's program scholarship.

C. As provided in this Section, when a participating school receives privately funded scholarship funds on behalf of a student pursuant to this Section, the annual appropriation of state funds for the program shall be reduced by the amount of such private scholarship program funds so received. The commissioner of administration shall determine and specify the amount of the reduction from the source of the funds to provide the maximum benefit to the state from the privately funded scholarship program. The state treasurer shall deposit the amount of such reduction as specified by the commissioner of administration into the Overcollections Fund created in R.S. 39:100.21 and credit such deposit to an account within the fund hereby established and created to be known as the "Program Participation Savings Account".

Acts 2014, No. 779, §1, eff. July 1, 2014; Acts 2015, No. 297, §1.